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House of Sand and Fog (2003)

tomatometer

75

Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 169
Fresh: 127 | Rotten: 42

Powerful and thought provoking film.

88

Average Rating: 7.9/10
Critic Reviews: 33
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 4

Powerful and thought provoking film.

audience

81

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 40,397

My Rating

Movie Info

Russian filmmaker Vadim Perelman makes his feature-film debut with the psychological drama House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III. Ben Kingsley plays Massoud Amir Behrani, an Iranian immigrant living the United States. Even though he was a high-ranking official in Iran, he works several menial jobs in order to provide his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and his son, Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout), with an apartment in California. He buys a California bungalow, thinking he can

R, 2 hr. 6 min.

Drama

Vadim Perelman, Shawn Otto

Mar 30, 2004

$12.9M

Dreamworks Distribution LLC

Cast

All Critics (182) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (133) | Rotten (42) | DVD (28)

You feel you not only know these people but where they come from.

February 4, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | Comment
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

If this movie isn't quite the contempo-Greek tragedy it wants to be, it's still a powerful, almost unforgettable meditation on fate, cultural collision and the morality of renovating a house that isn't really yours.

December 27, 2003 Full Review Source: Salon.com | Comment
Salon.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Meticulously acted and unafraid of a difficult subject, House of Sand and Fog resonates with a quality that can be vital to art -- a lack of moral rectitude.

December 27, 2003 Comment
Denver Rocky Mountain News
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The movie's intense watchability can be traced directly to superb performances by Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.

December 26, 2003 Comment
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

House of Sand and Fog doesn't deliver on the gut level of contest, and neither does it offer any other terms in which it does deliver for the audience.

December 26, 2003 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Serious and thoughtful; for mature teens+.

December 24, 2010 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | Comment
Common Sense Media

A lack of empathetic characters cripples this poorly paced but well acted drama about an Iranian family who purchase a city-auctioned bungalow in Northern California after its former tenant has been unjustly evicted.

May 9, 2009 Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | Comment (1)
ColeSmithey.com

Vadim Perelman's "House of Sand and Fog" is one of the low points of the current movie season. But then it's meant to be.

November 18, 2005 Full Review Source: Bangor Daily News (Maine) | Comment
Bangor Daily News (Maine)

The dramatic scheme is to show how two people ... intersect "tragically," but what we see is a group of characters who act as wrongheadedly and intransigently as imaginable.

July 19, 2005 Full Review Source: Blogcritics.org | Comment
Blogcritics.org

An intense drama with a brilliant performance by Ben Kingsley.

June 20, 2005 Full Review Source: FromTheBalcony | Comment

Partially successful.

May 4, 2005 Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness | Comment
Lessons of Darkness

House of Sand and Fog is an intense, thought- provoking movie experience

February 16, 2005 Full Review | Comment

The story is linear and lifts its excitements from the thriller genre without sacrificing its drama for superficial action sequences.

February 15, 2005 Full Review Source: Movie City News | Comment
Movie City News

... a movie about the perils of real estate speculation.

January 27, 2005 Full Review Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Comment
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for House of Sand and Fog

"I have taken us so far off our course, but now it is time to return. It is time for us to go home to our destiny."There are no good or bad characters in House of Sand and Fog. Just a lot of flawed individuals who seem to unintentionally make matters worse at every turn. This isn't a feel-good movie, to say the

June 25, 2010
lewiskendell

Super Reviewer

An extremely powerful film. Kingsley gives a performance that should be up with the bests of all-time, where Connelly, strikingly beautiful, gives an Oscar-worth one as well. A deep story that is rich in characterization as well as with things such as material possessions and how much we place value in them. A heck of

November 9, 2007
Dan Schultz

Super Reviewer

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